One of B.C.’s leading experts on tax policy says the charts Premier Gordon Campbell used in his TV address gave such a misleading picture of tax rates in this province that, had they been turned in by his students, he would make them do the assignment over again.
“If a student did this, I would say this is deceptive, maybe intentionally deceptive,” said Jon Kesselman, an economist with Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy. “I would say: Fix this and resubmit.’”
James Brander, an economist with the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business, agreed.
“These graphs are misleading as presented,” said Brander, who, like Kesselman, has generally been supportive of the Liberals’ tax policies. “There’s this little book called How to Lie with Statistics and Chapter 1 says [to avoid lying] you shouldn’t do it this way.”
In his televised address Wednesday, Campbell announced a 15-per-cent provincial tax cut on all income up to $72,000.
To illustrate the impact of the cut, Campbell displayed two charts — one for those earning $45,000, another for those earning $70,000 — showing how much income tax someone would pay in B.C. compared to other provinces.
However, instead of using zero as the baseline, which is typical, Campbell’s chart began at the $1,000 point.
The result is that the chart makes it look like Ontario residents pay two to three times as much in taxes as those in B.C. and that Quebec residents pay a whopping six times more. In reality, while B.C.’s income taxes are significantly lower, the difference is nowhere near that big.
“This is a dreadful graph,” said Brander. “You have to be pretty sharp to figure out what’s going on here. This is a very misleading graph, absolutely.”
Kesselman said: “It looks like it was either sloppy or ... intended to exaggerate the difference, even if B.C. is the lowest.”
To make things even more confusing, the charts Campbell used in his address did not indicate he was using $1,000 as a baseline, leaving viewers with no way to measure the real difference between provinces.
Versions of the charts later uploaded to the government’s website did note $1,000 was being used as the base, but only in very tiny type.
B.C. Finance Minister Colin Hansen said in an interview Thursday his staff originally produced a series of charts that were very detailed, including the exact amount of income taxes paid in each province.
“We started with a graphic with a lot more information on it and the sense was, people aren’t going to have time to read that, so let’s unclutter the graphs and we did that,” he said.
“If you’re asking, did we deliberately put the baseline at $1,000 and then not put the number on it so we could create a false impression, that was not the intent,” he said. “The intent was to demonstrate graphically what the premier was saying verbally. And that’s that British Columbia has significantly lower income tax rates for those income brackets than other provinces.”
cskelton@vancouversun.com
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